Group III-Nitride materials growth using gas source molecular beam epitaxy

Group III-Nitride materials, such as GaN, AlN, and CN have applications in a number of areas which are relevant to both earth and space based industries. Their successful development will allow for devices which withstand operation in extreme environments (>500 deg. C) and optoelectronic systems sensitive in the blue to UV range of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the past few years, at SVEC, we have developed a number of growth and characterization tools that are tailored to the synthesis of these nitride materials. As a result we have synthesized BN, CN, and GaN using both ion beam assisted deposition and gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GS-MBE) with both nitrogen and ammonia. In this presentation we will describe the instrumentation developed as part of this program and present results for the thin films synthesized by these methods. In particular, the investigation of the onset of heteroepitaxy and growth of GaN films on various substrates will be presented using the ion scattering techniques in-situ time of flight direct recoil spectroscopy (TOF-DRS) and mass spectroscopy of recoiled ions (MSRI) and reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED)